CHAPTER 2: THE VARIABLE COST
I was three blocks away from the shadow-beast when my mother's face finished dissolving.
The seven seconds were up. Behind me, the roar of the Vex-thing shattered the obsidian silence of the street. It sounded like grinding metal and wet hunger. Reality had caught up to the trade.
I didn't look back. Looking back is for people who have a future.
The Eastern Quarter's Nightmare version didn't just look wrong; it felt wrong. My lungs burned, and every breath felt like swallowing crushed glass. The Spell didn't care that I'd been awake for forty-eight hours; it just used my fatigue as a whetstone.
I skidded around the corner of what used to be Michigan Avenue. In the real world, this was a graveyard of rusted cars. In the Nightmare, the buildings were sheer cliffs of polished black stone, their windows replaced by rows of blinking, bloodshot eyes.
I stopped dead.
A wall of obsidian thorns, thirty feet high and humming with a low, necrotic vibration, cut the street in half.
[Variable Detected: The Lie of the Gate.]
[Description: This barrier exists because you convinced Rust the southern perimeter was impenetrable. In the Nightmare, your lies are physical architecture.]
My own manipulation was literally blocking my escape. Behind me, the Vex-creature rounded the corner. Its body was still forming—shadow congealing into muscle, teeth erupting from its maw like broken glass. It moved wrong, like stop-motion footage, but it was fast. Too fast.
I ripped the Red Ledger open. Three options burned onto the page. I didn't have time to weigh them.
[Option 1: The memory of your first successful "fix."]
[Option 2: The memory of the taste of your favorite meal.]
[Option 3: The memory of the name of your childhood best friend.]
The protein bar memory still carried warmth—the first time I'd felt full. The friend's name was already slipping anyway. But the "fix"? That was the blueprint of who I'd become. The beast was too close to hesitate.
I chose the fix. I tore the page.
For one second, I was fourteen again—cold triumph flooding through me as a High Circle scout believed my lie about the tainted meds. The moment I realized I didn't need a Gift to win.
Then it was gone.
The obsidian thorns liquefied. The wall turned into a shimmering, black puddle. I sprinted through it, my boots splashing in the ink. As I reached the other side, I stumbled. My hands hit the frozen ground. I knew I'd been brilliant at fourteen. I knew I'd built my reputation on that first trick. But when I tried to remember how—the exact words, the tone I'd used, the tells I'd read—there was just static.
I'd traded my blueprint. I still knew I was dangerous; I just couldn't remember why.
I forced myself to stand. The Vex-creature was still coming.
"Don't stop now, Ani," a voice drifted from the rooftops. "The math is getting interesting."
The Quiet Man was perched on a jagged obsidian cornice. He wasn't looking at me; he was looking at his pocket watch.
"You've traded a piece of your identity for a shortcut," he said. "Efficient. But what happens when you reach the sub-tunnels and realize you've forgotten the layout you spent three years mapping?"
"I'll rewrite the map," I spat, my voice sounding hollow even to my own ears.
"With what?" he asked. His grey eyes were flat. "You're running out of mother, Ani. You're running out of childhood. Soon, there will be nothing left of you but the Ledger. And a ledger with no entries is just a pile of dead paper."
He smiled and stepped backward. The obsidian wall swallowed him whole. I filed it away: the Quiet Man wasn't the beast I had to survive. He was the architect. And architects always have blueprints.
The Vex-creature was fifty yards back, its shadow stretching across the street like a dark tide.
I sprinted for the sub-tunnel entrance—a rusted hatch set into the street. In the real world, I'd pried it open with a crowbar six months ago.
In the Nightmare, it was welded shut with chains made of frozen screams.
[Variable Detected: The Locked Hatch.]
[Description: You told Vex this entrance didn't exist. Your lies have sealed it.]
[Price to unseal: The memory of your tenth birthday.]
Behind me, the beast's shadow was close enough to touch my heels. I felt its presence close enough to freeze the sweat on my neck—not warmth, but the burning cold of frostbite.
I tore the page without looking at it. I didn't have time to remember what the cake looked like anyway.